Corporate Social Review Magazine 1st Quarter 2013 | Page 23

How to shout about sustainability
effectively
By Toby Webb - http://tobywebb.blogspot.co.uk
While there are lots of ways to communicate badly, what are the
good things companies can do to stand out? Toby Webb has
some suggestions
There are a number of communications techniques that
corporate leaders in sustainability and corporate responsibility
communication use, to various degrees. Here are 15.
1. They have clear websites navigating
readers to clear targets. Websites change
and, if not planned, can sprawl needlessly.
Many companies neglect old pages,
which continue to turn up on Google years
later. These can offer a very misleading
impression of where the company is headed,
and how seriously it takes stakeholder
communications. In the world of Twitter and
Facebook, everything can unfortunately
mean something.
2. They demonstrate both an understanding
of the global challenges, and their role
in the world. Getting this right does not
simply involve quoting WWF on the umber
of planets we will soon need. Showing
understanding is about demonstrating much
deeper knowledge and acknowledging
the “megaforces” driving sustainability
concerns, and showing how the company is
starting to try to tackle them, and contribute to wider solutions.
3. They use their reporting as the basis for communications
campaigns, not as the campaign itself. Short, targeted
messaging to key, focused stakeholder groups, on top of a
main website and regular reporting. This point is relatively selfexplanatory. The report is just a library. Authentic stories from
the report are what will improve your reputation with employees,
customers and wider stakeholders.
4. They are not afraid of honest debate about challenges,
progress, missed targets, problems and solutions, online and
face-to-face. They value being challenged and seek to use
the opportunity to innovate and improve, rather than becoming
defensive.
5. They use social media to communicate on sustainability,
either via a corporate account or by specific accounts. Many
companies are nervous about doing this. Social media is risky.
But if you have something authentic to say, you should say it.
That doesn’t mean you have to issue a press release and crow
about running your business well. Tone is everything, as is
personality. Look at Sainsbury’s corporate social media account
for a good example.
6. They publish regular performance data and updates.
Publishing annual data seems quite behind the times now.
What’s wrong with quarterly?
7. They offer news feeds on progress. This is a very simple thing

to do, but many companies don’t do it. It’s simple to drip-feed
progress reports via short news items on your site. It looks good
to stakeholders.
8. They showcase critical stakeholder voices and suggestions
for improvement. This is vitally important, yet few companies do
it this well. Patagonia is the best-known example. Wal-Mart tries
too. Perhaps Waitrose would have spotted the looming disaster
of its Shell retail partnership if it had taken
this idea on board via the web.
9. They partner with credible academic
institutions and NGOs. Science matters.
Whether it’s technical research to
improve performance, lower impact and
drive efficiency, environmental data, or
social science research, outside parties
with good reputations can really help
with both strategy and a reputation for
authentic communications. Take a look at
how DuPont and Dow Chemical work with
NGOs and academics.
10. They talk about how sustainability fits
with business strategy – and how that will
improve. This is hard to get right. What is
strategy anyway? Most companies seem
to confuse it with tactics. Put simply,
strategy is the destination; tactics is how
you get there.
11. They don’t forget to link sustainability with both social issues
and governance, global and local. For many companies in the
US, sustainability is all about green. Tell that to a Canadian
mining company or European retailer. Social issues, and how
you engage with them, are the number one issue in the rest of
the world, so no credible company can pretend they don’t exist.
Yet, for some reason, many continue to.
12. They host public debates which are streamed online and do
not always have themselves at the centre. There are not many
examples of companies doing this well. Unilever is probably the
best known.
13. They seek crowd-sourced solutions and encourage and
fund innovation. Marks & Spencer is a good example of how
to do this, as is Coca-Cola Enterprises and PepsiCo. But B2B
companies can do this too. Interface and Desso are well-known
examples but there are others, such as Skanska, pursuing this
idea on a large scale.
14. They a re clear about sustainability as a business opportunity.
They recognise that stakeholder engagement is about listening
and encouraging intra-preneurs, as much as it is about
responding to external trends and pressures.
15. They are clear about their corporate power and influence
and have a public debate about how that power and influence
are used, and report on progress, positive and negative.

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